Today we’d like to introduce you to Robert Spring.
Hi Robert, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
Our story starts in Illinois back in 2012. I myself Rob was assaulted on the job working for another company, which led to severe spinal injury. That put me out of work for a long time. I was told, I wouldn’t work as a mechanic again. I was put on work restrictions, and nobody would hire me. We moved from the State of Illinois back to my home state of Minnesota where I had family.
Once I got established in Minnesota, with my family, my father cosigned for a small startup business loan of twelve thousand dollars to cover all of our startup costs. Our initial rent we opened our doors in May of 2013, with approximately $1500 in our account. Within our first year of business, we hit 389,000 in gross sales. Our first facility was in Clearwater, Minnesota, which helped us make a name for ourselves. We attempted to start up a second location. But with the costs increasing of the rental units and owners wanting to sell but not sell at a fair price, we ended up moving to a second location in Albertville Minnesota, which even further grew our business to the point where we outgrew that location and the facility was just not what we needed in 2019, just before COVID happened. We got into a purchase agreement on our current building, which is located at 16 0 6 south 10th street. In Princeton, Minnesota.
From this location, we have been here. Our longest going on almost 7 years here, being Minnesota’s a premier hot rod shop. Doing everything from your basic engine swaps to full chassis builds, custom electrical harness, building lighting. Some interior work, body, paint, collision, refinishing car, audio, remote starts alarms and more. We are a husband-and-wife team who has been working in this industry together. For 12 plus years, and we’re both mechanics. We both have a passion for cars, trucks or anything that might go fast. Our entire family is encased in the automotive world. We share passion in our family.
I’m teaching our children how to work on cars properly. We had a lot of ups and downs through covid dealing with part shortages dealing with shipping issues, broken items, returned items. Other companies taking too long to ship parts or to do the work for the parts that we needed done like machine shops etc. I always dreamed as a little kid that I would be building hot rods and have my own shop and build the things that I get to build today and work on the cars from history. From the present day, modern hot rods to tuner cars, low riders, drift cars drag cars 4 / 4 trucks, thousands of horsepower diesel engines. You name it, we’re doing, we’re building in. We’re still a small company. Because quality does not come from having a lot of people. It comes from having the right skilled people. And then of course it’s always what a customer is willing to pay for.
We have made ourselves trend setters in the industry. In doing certain types of builds certain types of exhaust systems, building parts and manufacturing parts. Now, for different chassis.
Our company has grown in a way that was unexpected. Though COVID almost caused us to close our doors due to lack of business. We still survived, which only good companies that are literally less than a year in a location. Could survive, we don’t know how, but we made it through. The thing is, at Rigs to Rods, we don’t just specialize in one thing. I think that’s what helped us make it through. We specialize in so many different aspects and areas that your general mechanic just doesn’t.
We want ourselves to be better constantly. We still to this day continue to do schooling and training to keep up with all of the details that we need to keep up with today’s current vehicles.
We are currently in an area that we are building a lot of Resto mods. We are doing a lot of Coyote swaps. LS swamps, Coyote builds, LS builds, Hemi builds hemi swaps, we’re building obscure engines, RB20D. ETS, for Nissan skylines, building Hellcats building an old Plymouth.
We’re in the midst of doing a Cummins swap on an old International Travel All and an old swept line crew, cab Dodge truck. Where we’re going to make sure that the push button transmission shifter works with the new transmission and engine combo. In the chassis, these aren’t just little quick projects. These are things that take years to build fabricate, design. It’s not just a slap and tickle. We do things a little different here and we like it that way! You’re going to know our build is separate from somebody else’s. The finish is going to be far superior, our wire tucking, our harness cleanliness. Our paint is going to have extra care. Our body work has extra time and extra care put into it to give you the best possible results. We can.. my route started back when I was a teenager in the professional world. I get into automotive electrical. He’s doing remote, starts car. Audio alarm systems TVS sunroofs. You name it any aftermarket accessory? You could put on a vehicle, I was installing. It that led me into electrical diagnostic and harness building harness design.
I left the automotive world for a short time and worked in the ag. Industry between myself and a good friend. That’s no longer with us. We built and designed a harness for Case International, we sold the rights to our harness back when I worked for them. From that point, it led me back into a path of the automotive world. I wanted to create my dream. I wanted to make it a reality. I had gone through divorce and everything in my life changed. I had two young children, was a single dad. Met my amazing wife proceeded to start a life together. The inevitable happened, which led us to Minnesota. I don’t think there could be a stronger or better team out there than us. We have gone through ups, and we have gone through Downs. We have dealt with situations. That would break most couples and break and destroy most businesses. We have come out of it with our heads held high and still to this day. We smile every day that we get to walk in our doors and see our customers. Happy faces. We enjoy taking care of people and they’re most precious cargo. We want to make sure that our vehicles are safe. Anything that we build, whether it’s a hot rod or a tuner car or a drag car drift car. Et cetera are number one thing is always safety, making sure it can stop and turn safely. Any of our suspension and chassis designs are strictly developed for worst case scenario. To do its best to save whoever’s inside the vehicle. We take our chassis design a little bit further than most do. Some of our upcoming projects to be released are going to be a 1972. Coyote swapped 6 speed manual Grand Turino
Very custom Grand Turino, to the point that we are looking to take that to Sema. We have a 1991 Nissan Skyline that we will be releasing. Soon as we finish this, that project as well. We have a few custom cabovers, because we don’t just work on hot rods. We work on big trucks too and we build a little bit of everything
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Definitely, hasn’t been a smooth road. We’ve dealt with moving our location 3 times and starting over in completely new cities. Three separate times we’ve dealt with court cases. We’ve dealt with theft. We’ve dealt with some scams and our credit cards being hacked. Back in 2017, we almost lost everything due to a car accident that my wife and children were in. Where my wife and one child were hospitalized. They both have lifelong scars from that accident. We lived off of what credit cards we had and what little bit of work was going through the shop, because we weren’t there. We had a couple good employees that did their best. While we were gone but could only do so much, we have lived a lot of ups and Downs with COVID. And the county and the state governments, and all of the aspects of owning a business that are just simply not simple.
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Well, we specialize in custom exhaust, custom chassis fabrication. We specialize in custom paint and body work. We specialize in engine swaps. We are very very well-known for our custom wild and custom crazy exhaust systems that we create in hand fabricate.
We are also very well-known for our attention to detail. When it comes to building a hot rod. I guess some of our favorite highlights of our brand are the Joker. Build designing and now distribution of Dodge D series tubular upper control arms, as well as we manufacture a big brake kit for the same D. Series pickups from the 80s. We’re in product development for the Ecoboost Explorers. On downpipes and exhaust systems where we will be able to ship direct. We are also working on some other rare chassis Jaguar and Volkswagen diesels. The types of services that we offer are everything from your basic oil change tires, brakes, suspension, steering. It doesn’t matter if you own a car a motorcycle, a dirt bike, a 4 Wheeler, a semi truck, a boat, no matter what it is. We have somebody capable to working on it.
We offer full engine building, full transmission building. We are Minnesota’s only retailer for a lot of different products, including Color Fittings, Black Widow exhaust. LED glow lighting SSQ custom headlights and taillights.
On top of many other products, those are just to name a few
Alright so before we go can you talk to us a bit about how people can work with you, collaborate with you or support you?
Anybody that wants to work with us? Or collaborate with us, can call us directly at 763-634-9269 or they can send us an email.
At rigstorods@gmail.com
Or they can find us on our socials
Facebook @rigstorodsservicerepairand performance
Instagram @rigstorods
Tik tok @rigstorodsmedia
@rigstorods
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.rigstorods.net/
- Instagram: @rigs_to_rods
- Facebook: @rigstorodsservicerepair&Performance
- Other: @rigstorodsmedia (tiktok)
